Topics - Goombert

Ok so I finally got tired of reading super long GitHub comments because GitHub does not provide any collapse features for long code or quote blocks. Somebody showed me this which just came out and it works perfect! Definitely give it a try, you can customize it quite a bit too.

Also, please remember to put logs and stacktraces in the ``` style code blocks from now and not paste them raw into a GitHub issue. Not just on ENIGMA's tracker but everywhere you post an issue on GitHub. That way people can use this extension and navigate the site easier.

So for the longest time I was uploading all of our releases and extra packages onto this special ENIGMA team Dropbox account because Josh wouldn't give me FTP access to the site's server because I told him that would be a bad idea because I would almost certainly wreck the site if I had those kind of powers, sort of a Hitler unchecked Churchill kind of thing.

Anyway, I first started experimenting with GitHub's releases mechanism for LateralGM and it seems to have gone well. I noticed people complaining about the portable ZIP being on Dropbox (literally on the Dropbox files comments because I didn't disable comments), so I have decided to do this for all of our other projects as well. What's great about this new way of distribution is that you guys can download old revisions without me having to compile links to them on the Wiki. The install.py script will also pull packages from GitHub now too.

There is currently some issues around version numbers. First, the plugin has always used the same version as LGM even when it never changed because I didn't know what else to set the version to. So GitHub marks the latest release as an older version because it doesn't know which one since they are all based on the same commit. That will be fixed as soon as a commit and new release are made. Maybe Josh and Rusky can help me fix the tags before then though.

Second, I didn't know what to version the ENIGMA portable so I just started it off at 0.0.5.0 since we should be around r5 now. Josh can take care of the right version numbering later. Possibly when we do get a build bot it can just auto increment the version number for us too. Finally, I started off JEIE's first release as version 0.1.0 since that's a good number to start with.

Let me know if any issues crop up with downloading any of the packages and such on the site. Cheers

Ok so it seems there was some confusion with About.ey files before and I want to get them fixed. So after a new PR to master you will need to download the new ENIGMA plugin and LateralGM the next time you try to update ENIGMA. I have updated the install.py script for Linux users and I have also updated the Windows portable ZIP to make this easier. As usual, you can also just grab the latest LateralGM and ENIGMA jars from the extra packages page and overwrite them manually yourself as well.

The first thing I had to do was patch the LGM plugin to actually use "Name" for the extension label in the GUI. The wiki articles all state clearly that "Name" is the part of a system's eyaml description file that should be human readable. The "Identifier" field is what would be used in code, it would be similar to a C++ identifier in that it probably shouldn't have spaces and should also be the folder name of the system or extension in which it resides.

Then I had to update and correct all of the About.ey files for every extension. The major systems under Game Settings->ENIGMA->API have always been correct. The "ID" field for extensions was also changed to "Identifier" for consistency.

So now even application development and not just games is starting to look a lot more like GameMaker. This is funny because for a while Josh was also talking about how the smartest AI that could write programs would essentially be a PowerPoint compiler.

This was requested of me to write a script that can do this. Drawing sprites this way makes it easier to scale parts of them without messing up and blurring the corners. This is especially useful for rendering UI controls.

NOTE: These scripts should work in older GM versions, but if you are using Studio or ENIGMA you may want to replace control variable increments (such as += 1 in a for loop) with ++i as an optimization because preincrement is faster. If you are using ENIGMA then it is even faster to just use an int with preincrement.

// this works in old GM versions but is slowerfor(i =0; i <3; i +=1){// this is faster and only works in GMS, ENIGMA, or C++for(i =0; i <3;++i){// this is the fastest in both ENIGMA or C++for(int i =0; i <3;++i){This is what a 9-patch sprite looks like:

for(i =0; i <3; i +=1){for(j =0; j <3; j +=1){draw_sprite( spr, j +(i *3), xx + j * ww, yy + i * hh);}}My second attempt actually adds the arguments for scaling. If you wanted to center it around the x, y parameter you can just subtract the sprite origin from xx and yy.

/// draw_sprite_patch(sprite, x, y, stretchedWidth, stretchedHeight);/// by Robert B. Colton////// draws a 9 patch sprite with x, y as the top-left corner where the middle and /// center row and column is stretched to the given width and height/// subimages in the order: top-left, top-center, top-right,/// middle-left, middle-center, middle-right, bottom-left, bottom-center, bottom-right

// middle-center needs stretched horizontally and verticallydraw_sprite_part_ext(spr, subimg, cw, ch, ow, oh, xx + cw, yy + ch, sw/ow, sh/oh, color,alpha);I can think of about 50 more ways that this can be done, including using the tile drawing functions, which may be faster because they are batched and have little overhead. I haven't wrote those yet but if anybody needs it done a different way, feel free to ask me and I'll write the script.

Just out of curiosity and to see where to go next. I would like to get a feel of what people want. For both LGM and ENIGMA, please tell me what the 3 most important issues you see are. You should try to pick simple things that you feel are important for each, or you can suggest 1 really important item that takes a little longer to do. So either 3 simple things for each project that you find important or 1 really big thing.

This release has been a long time coming and hopes to address a lot of the issues many of you have been having with the editor. LateralGM's code base has also been substantially cleaned up in the process.

ENIGMA users may experience an issue using the new LateralGM because ENIGMA.exe always passes it " " an empty string of length 1 on the command line, which LGM interprets as a file open. Originally I patched around this in LGM before realizing it is actually an ENIGMA problem. I have undone that now but ENIGMA.exe needs to be updated and a new portable ZIP made.

1.8.7 Changes

* The room editor now has a multi-selection mode (thanks egofree), where you can select several tiles or sprites. Then you can copy, cut and paste them. Also you can select a region and fill it with tiles or sprites.* There are three new buttons in the room's toolbar, in order to switch the following modes : 'Snap to grid', 'Add on top', 'Add multiple'. Before these modes were only available with keyboard shortcuts.* There was an overhaul of the tiles management in the rooms editor. Before it was difficult to understand how to add or modify tiles, and with the new version, it's much easier.http://enigma-dev.org/docs/Wiki/Room_Editor

* Adds a check to see if audio clips are open before closing them on the sound frame. This is to fix a Linux issue where the pulse audio implementation in OpenJDK does not like you calling stop if the clip was never actually opened before.* Fixes a mistake in the action list model where one of the add() methods stored two undo's. It would lead to an exception just adding a single action and undoing twice.* Removes swinglayout-lgm.jar from class-path in the manifest because we no longer support Java 5.* Uses the new ICO file created by @JoshDreamland without any aliasing.https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/pull/265

* Adds the checkered background pattern to the room editor.* Changes default room background color to 66CCFF because that better represents the sky, what is likely to be the most common background.* Fixes layout in the game settings frame for the author and version number/project info tab. The labels should have been trailing as they are in GM8.1.* Adds keyboard shortcuts for Bold, Italic, and Underline to the Game Information editor.* Cleans up the JoshEdit commits and finally moves most of the changes into JoshDreamland/JoshEdit master.* Removes double-click expandable splitters. They were not necessary and basically overkill, even more annoying to me than the one touch expandable toolbars.* Replaces the old color picker with a new control that allows you to enter hexadecimal color values. This should make it easier to copy and paste color values. You can still click the button to get the old color picker or enter the hex value manually.* Adds anti-aliasing to the search bar and fixes related clipping. This search bar was a custom created control.* Introduces a right orientation mode for those who may be left handed or prefer to work with the IDE that way because of how it saves mouse movements between toolbar clicks.* Hides some unimplemented features such as Undo/Redo for the background and sprite editor. The controls are still there, the buttons have just been commented out from the layout.* Removes references to the "Quantum" look and feel that I experimented with. The master branch supports various look and feels so it is possible to recreate it as a custom look and feel or using a plugin for LGM. It does not belong hardcoded into LateralGM.* Fixes a UI issue with any JCheckBox on a JToolBar by using setOpaque(false) to allow the gradient of the toolbar to be drawn (affects Swing look and feel, was also done in lgm16b4).* Fixes an issue with the about frame locking up with OpenJDK. It was caused by a method being called that had no effect, it was to change the cursor for hyperlinks, and it was also being passed null, which is undefined by the API, instead of Cursor.DEFAULT.* Reduces the size of the exported jar by removing things like old splash screens from the jar description. This was a mistake I neglected to consider in earlier releases.* Fixes property mappings in the sound editor. I had some of the keys messed up before which was making the editors save the properties wrong.* Drag and drop importer for resource menus implemented. You can now drag a resource from the project tree over to the parent selector on an object for example. This is consistent with the way it behaves in GM: Studio.* No longer removes the ability to edit a script when you have an external editor configured. You can use both the external editor and the built in editor. Both sets of buttons will appear, and it will behave as the sprite editor does.* Redesigned the preferences frame with a new layout. It now looks very consistent and uses proper alignment of controls. A huge improvement over the mess that was the old layout.* Implements community and submit issue command links to the Help menu for convenience. All are configurable from preferences as expected.* Uses the new splash screen created by rcobra* Adds a reset defaults button to the preferences frame This currently clears recent files too, and you have to restart the whole IDE before the frame reverts its controls too.https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/pull/245

1.8.7.11 Changes

* Fixed handling of null resource references in the GMX writer. Before you could not delete a resource, like a sprite, that was referred to by some other resource, such as an object, without the GMX writer throwing an exception. It now behaves the same way as the GMK writer does.* Fixes conversion of GMK sprites to GMX sprites. Because GMX does not save the transparency pixel at all, the writer will now check if a sprite has that property set and remove its background before writing it. GMS does the exact same thing on GMK import.* GMX will now properly update the last saved time when writing a project.* The GMX writer will also properly save the background room now from the path editor. Before it was saving the name, but GMX actually stores the id of the room. Really you can blame YoYo for this inconsistency, as it can actually lead to a bug where if you delete the room, save, and then reload it will point to the next room in the tree (but I don't think they care).https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/pull/300

I am becoming more and more convinced that OpenJDK is haunted with ghosts. I can't recall exactly how many, but there's been a lot, of people show up and once they install the Oracle JDK their LGM problems seem to just vanish.

I really don't think I understand why it is that OpenJDK is in such a poor condition. It's apparently just the Oracle JDK with proprietary code removed and under an open source license. I mean, the biggest contributor to OpenJDK is.... Oracle itself. So I am not sure I see any real reason for the disparity of the two JDK's.

I am introducing a stable branch to LateralGM which only pulls in the most important fixes on top of lgm16b4. This version is not concerned with changing the look and feel and other aesthetic enhancements. It is concerned with code quality and functionality. It is mainly targeted at those who want a more stable LateralGM without all the bells and whistles that sometimes don't even whistle.

Reasons to break support for older Java versions:* getSelectedValues() is deprecated in favor of getSelectedValuesList() as of JDK 1.7 and these methods are used in ActionList* SwingWorker was added in JDK 1.6

I also created a custom look and feel derived from Metal which can be downloaded on GitHub. I am aware that the L&F looks like complete garbage, almost as bad as Metal itself, however this should serve as a basic example for anyone who wants to understand how it is done. That said, I did follow the correct coding standards of the standard look and feels.https://github.com/RobertBColton/CalicoLaF

I do not believe that the Calico look and feel will ever become fully complete. It is a substantial amount of work compared to simply styling a modern JavaFX application with CSS for example. I would however like to see a nice look and feel that is unique to LateralGM, though it will likely be rebuilt in JavaFX anyway at this point. In the mean time, feel free to play around and create your own look and feels.

Ok so, basically, I am a terrible artist, and LateralGM could use a good modern splash screen. I've made several attempts before and we've come up with semi-good splash screens before. I have been making some more attempts and just can't quite get it right. If there is any graphics artist who would be interested in designing one, please share them in this topic.

The ultimate goal here would be like one of the Microsoft splashscreens, because in my opinion, they make very aesthetically pleasing splash screens:

So far, DaSpirit and Rusky like this one and so do I, the clear winner of mine:

This is an important question I wanted to ask some of you. Primarily because of a ton of crazy issues you all keep having. More specifically this question relates to Linux installations of ENIGMA. The newer OpenJDK releases are virtually unable to run LateralGM or any Swing application, from dialog panes freezing to not closing and random frequent segfaults. a2h who built this website we currently use came back from some of his studies and things he's been doing and brought it to my attention.https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/issues/227

I tested for him in my VirtualBox Ubuntu 15.1 install with both OpenJDK 7 and 8 (specifically 8u60) and both of them easily reproduced his issues. Simply opening the Help->About dialog would hang and crash, even though nothing more is being done than a simple JOptionPane call. I then removed both of these and installed the Oracle proprietary JDK and the issues all but seemingly vanished. Historically, the Oracle JDK is what I have used to test and develop LateralGM myself and from here on out, I am going to say that is the recommended installation because Swing applications are virtually unusable with OpenJDK.

These issues may be related to the new Java modularization for Java 9 which adds modules that have metadata for a package manager type interface that will come to Java. So when you install Java, you won't install the runtime and when you run a Java program it can tell the Java installation where to download the necessary packages/runtime libraries from. Because Swing and the older Java jars/libraries were not built with modularity in mind they are moving things around and hiding certain interfaces, the following news article clarifies all of this:http://www.javaworld.com/article/2861074/java-platform/modular-javas-changes-could-break-ides.html

Many people are afraid that some IDE's, including Eclipse and NetBeans, may require substantial refactoring to work properly with the newer Java's. So this is basically just a pointer that if you are having crazy problems with LateralGM on Linux, try out the proprietary Oracle JDK.

A small school in North Carolina has decided to stop using GameMaker: Studio because of its proprietary DRM. The school claims on a number of occasions the program corrupted games developed by students. The school is SkilStak located in Cornelius, North Carolina and is a private school for teaching students 8 to 18 years old computer programming through game design.http://skilstak.io/

From a GitHub repository hosted by one of the school's staff members, we find the following quotes:

Quote from: SkilStak School Staff

I strongly encourage anyone considering GameMaker to look at Phaser.io instead. You learn real technologies that will carry you farther than the proprietary and drag-and-drop GameMaker, (which is now owned by an online video gambling/gaming company). We have dropped GameMaker from all classes at SkilStak after it corrupted a student's game irrecoverably. He was the 6th in 3 years to lose everything because of GameMaker bugs. He would have had to reassemble everything from assets and saved code, which is stored in XML and prone to horrible merge conflicts when combined with GitHub for beginners. Just say no to GameMaker.

We are all very comfortable with this to some degree, you save in the top left etc etc. But there's a problem here.

The tool bar buttons are never aligned with the content being edited. I propose that for LateralGM we move all the side panels on the room editor, path editor, sprite editor, and background editor to the right instead of the left.

With this change all of the toolbar buttons are properly aligned with the content area and requires less mouse dragging to click. What does everyone think about doing this? Since I realized this I've really come to like the idea. An alternative would be to move the toolbar in the content area (but this is gross if we keep it the edit panel on the left because I'm used to save being in the top left of the window). The other alternative is to simple right align the toolbar (though this also moves the save button to where you wouldn't expect it to be). Please let me know what you all think if I don't get enough feedback I may just end up doing this anyway.

The alternative looks like the following. To eliminate the whitespace we could put the save button in the bottom left like it is on the font editor and object editor then move the toolbar into the content area. I don't like this though because I am really used to the save button being in the top left.

As a preference it could also move the tree. The IDE would be either left or right oriented.